Week 7

always a good time to hear from everyone! I'm doing really well here its sad that the end of the MTC is in sight, but at the same time I am SOO excited to start serving and teaching real people!

So quick rundown of Elder Chamberlin's week:

Tuesday: normal day of learning thai and studying the gospel, and had a devotional speaker, Elder Perkins, who came and talked about how everyone can change, and he shared a lot of good missionary scriptures from Alma, about Alma and Amulek, and the sons of Mosiah. It was a solid devotional.

Wednesday-Saturday: Studying a lot of Thai (its so much fun and the language is just sweet) for example words like God (phra phuu pen caw) translates to holy person that is boss, or like conversion (kaan blian cay) which translates change of heart, repentance (klab cay) is return heart, etc. you get new perspectives on words and they bring on whole new meanings its pretty sweet. Our lessons with our investigators early this week were weak in the sense that they didnt really keep commitments and their desire to learn just wasnt there... fortunately this week a focus was on extending and following up on commitments, and we learned some good stuff. Our lesson with naan on friday was our best lesson with her yet (shes real but our teacher is role playing her investigator she had in thailand), and shes struggling with getting married bc shes living with her boyfriend and they want to get married but want to wait til she graduates, and long story short we learned there is no way to convince her with our words that she needs to get married, but she needs the spirit to testify to her that it is the right thing to do. So our last lesson with her we went in with not much of a gameplan other than having a couple scriptures about trusting in God, and how we can be blessed for keeping the commandments (Alma 38:5 and Mosiah 2:41 thanks bro greiner for getting me so prepared scripturally) and the spirit was definitely strong in our lesson. Naan (even tho she is role playing) and Elder Dunnaway and I could feel God's tremendous love for each of us, especially our investigator... which is really so weird because we were teaching our teacher, but God has his hands in all things, and when we hear truth, the spirit will always testify of it to us. We also got a new investigator this week which has been sweet bc its nice to start off our visits on a good foot because we have a bit more experience in teaching and in Thai, so thats been good too.

Sunday: Our two Lao speaking missionaries (going to San Diego and the other to San Francisco) our leaving this week it was sad hearing there parting words, but they gave great testimonies. Elder Reagan (ill try to attach a picture) is going to be very missed. He's the guy that knows every scene in star wars and battles in the hallway re-enacting the whole movie with Elder Davenport, hahahahaha, goofy guy but is gonna be a great missionary. Our district got the opportunity to meet megan at the temple which was pretty funny and super good to see her. The handshake was weird but its good to see my family and friends are still alive hahaha, after being here for what feels like... a very long time, the people i used to know seem like a dream haha so that was good. Then we had an amazing speaker come that night, he is the head guy over all the media in the Church (mormon.org, lds videos, etc) and he gave a really good talk. He gave us a sneak peek at what the new mormon.org is gonna be like this year, and there doing super super cool things to help missionaries be able to better utilize technology to spread the gospel "to every whole and creature" or something like that in Jeremiah 16:16 i think. He showed us some cool statistics on how the "He lives" easter video and "He is the Gift" christmas video affected missionary work. Because of the "He is the Gift" video which had i think over 30million unique views or something like, there was over 200,000 people who watched that who then requested to meet with missionaries- and over 100,000 of those people became investigators. And thats just what they were able to track- and they are starting on another video for this easter which the guy was SUPER stoked about and said he was getting emotional just thinking about it, so yeah get ready for that i guess. He said a lot of good stuff but yeah ill leave it there.

this week i've been hearing the phrase "The Lord qualifies those he calls" a lot and so ive been thinking about that a bit- and i think its cool how God works with imperfect people to accomplish his purposes, but how everyone, no matter where they are in life, play a role in helping someone else along their own journey. I dont know, its hard to explain, but it's always good to know that God's got yo back, becuase when you trust in Him you really can do anything.

P-day today has been great- i love doing my laundry and all my little clean up items, stay at home moms have it great- i love that accomplishing feeling of the warm sheets coming out of the dryer. Good lessons learned here at the MTC.

A package came from Scott and Sarah this week with a martinellis in it, which reminds me that New Years was this week hahahaha. We partyed all night. jk i went to bed at 1030 but we did pop open the martinellis and play a rousing game of uno before bed- needless to say it was a very fun night.

2 and a half weeks left in the mtc and a week and a half til i turn 19 which is wierd, im so old. but i wouldnt want to be anywhere else for this special time of year! getting to celebrate christs birth, my brith, and the earths birth, or whatever new years is for, has been a pretty cool experience.

well i love you, im doing good, and it sounds like everyone at home is doing good and everyone had a fun christmas and new years! love you all and as for calling home on the way to thailand, im not sure exactly how it works but i know i can buy like a card here at the mtc that lets me use the phones at the airport- but i think sis smith had some revolutionary idea about the whole thing so idk- ask her! love you!

Elder Chamberlin

Ps. i wanted to invite everyone to watch "i am the good shepherd, and other sheep i have" bible video on mormon.org. :)